Facing a large group of Philip Simmons Elementary fourth graders, Jonathan Zawislak asked the crowd, “How many of you have been on a roller coaster?”
Hands shot in the air.
“How many of you have been on a roller coaster in the rain?”
Some hands lingered.
“That is a little bit of what it’s like inside of a hurricane.”
Zawislak would know; he is a flight director with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (also known as NOAA) and has ridden through storms on a special aircraft that hunts hurricanes.
Zawislak was among several speakers Thursday morning when the students swung by Charleston International Airport on a special field trip that taught students about the formation of tropical cyclones and what equipment meteorologists use to track hurricanes.
However, the pièce de résistance was the getting to tour two hurricane hunter aircraft: the WC-130J known as “Hercules” and the WP-3D known as “Orion”. VIEW PHOTOS.
With the week of May 5 being known as National Hurricane Preparedness Week, NOAA is in the process of visiting five locations on the east coast to raise awareness about hurricane preparedness. Charleston happened to be one of those stops on May 9, with a hurricane preparedness event organized at the airport, and Philip Simmons Elementary fourth-graders were invited to come and learn about hurricane preparedness. 
Thursday’s event turned out to be a pretty big one with a high media presence and handful of hurricane and weather experts on the tarmac. Governor Henry McMaster was also in attendance. With hurricane season rapidly approaching, NOAA officials are using the hurricane preparedness tour to encourage families to have their plans in place should the area be threatened by a hurricane – everything from evacuation plans, to checking ahead on what their insurance covers, to knowing what resources are available to them
There were a number of state and local agencies that had a booth or a presence at the event, including officials from the National Weather Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (or FEMA), the Charleston County Mobile Command Center, the Dorchester County Mobile Command Center, the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (or FLASH), the Joint Base Charleston Fire Truck, the Charleston County Aviation Authority Police Department K9s, the South Carolina Emergency Management Division and the State Climatology Office.
Students started off their field trip learning about the special aircraft with Zawislak, joined by Tech. Sgt. Vince Boyd with the U.S. Air Force. The experts described what it is like to fly in a hurricane (obviously very jolty and very loud) and broke down the roles of the aircraft during a storm. The students then got to walk through both aircraft.
The WC-130J is a high-wing, medium-range aircraft used in several weather reconnaissance missions throughout the year. This plane is specifically configured to penetrate tropical disturbances and storms, hurricanes and winter storms and is equipped with meteorological instruments and radar to obtain data on the current development, movement, size and intensity of these systems.
The WC-130J is the weather data collection platform for the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, also known as The Air Force Hurricane Hunters. It carries a minimum crew of five: pilot, co-pilot, navigator, aerial reconnaissance weather officer and weather reconnaissance loadmaster. The crew collects and reports weather data as often as every minute.
Meanwhile, the WP-3D is a versatile turboprop aircraft equipped with a variety of scientific instrumentation, radars, and recording systems for both in-situ and remote sensing measurements of the atmosphere, the earth, and its environment. NOAA uses the plane to collect low-altitude data to fill gaps in data not available from ground-based radar or satellite imagery.
The outside of the WP-3D is adorned with cyclone stickers sporting the names of storms the aircraft has flown through; students asked crew members which storm was the most difficult, and experts from both the WP-3D and the WC-130J agreed Hurricane Ian in 2022 was a memorable experience; Ian was a deadly category 5 hurricane that struck Florida and also caused damage across Cuba and the Carolinas.
The experience better prepares the students for next school year, when they will dive into earth science as fifth graders. Philip Simmons Elementary fourth grade teacher Ashlee Newton said the field trip extended the children’s studies about energy transfers and data collection.
Newton said her students enjoyed checking out the aircraft and learning about the hurricanes, as well as seeing the governor and local weather experts such as meteorologists Bill Walsh and Rob Fowler. They also told her they liked learning about hurricanes that had a direct impact on their area, such as Hurricane Hugo, a category 4 storm that devastated Charleston in September 1989.
“It was an exciting day for students learning relevant, meaningful ways to apply concepts previously studied in the classroom,” Newton said.
